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I just got done with Soldier of Sidon, by Gene Wolfe, the long-delayed sequel to Soldier of the Mists and Soldier of Arete (also published as Latro of the Mists). It was disappointing, especially as compared to the first two books. Wolfe did a pretty good job portraying classical Egypt but the whole thing seemed pointless. I'll re-read it in about six months to see if I pick up anything new.
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Nov 16, 2006 00:12
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Juxtaposed posted:Just last night I finished My Brain is Open by Bruce Schechter, a fantastic account of mathematician Paul Erdos' life. It's the most recent book in something of a math history binge, a topic which turns out to be either impossibly boring or incredibly interesting. I read that too. Paul Erdos is one of those people whom you can't make up because they're too unbelievable. (The 25 years of amphetamines don't help the plausibility either)
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Nov 23, 2006 03:24
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Just finished two books: The Evening Star by Henry Cooper, about the Magellan probe that orbited Venus for a few years in the earl 90s. It was a decent look at the scientists on the team and the science as it was practised. It might be a little too technical for a general audience as he spent a bit of time on how the various algorithms on the spacecraft screwed up. Fluke, by Christopher Moore. I thought this was ok for the first 2/3 or so but then it just went off the rails at a key event. Not Moore's best.
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Nov 26, 2006 07:37
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Captain Alatriste, by Arturo Perez-Riveste. Fun short book about an ex-soldier in seventeenth century Spain (1623 if Wikipedia is to be believed) and some buckled swashes. I skipped over the poetry  , but there's a throwaway The Three Musketeers reference. The Spirit Gate, by Kate Elliot. Generic fantasy decently done.
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Dec 25, 2006 02:49
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Sung in Blood, by Glen Cook. I figure this is Cook's take on Doc Savage and while I like the idea the execution was very weak. It's stripped-down minimalist writing and although it made the plot go by fast the reading experience suffered. There's a hook for a second volume that never appeared; maybe if Cook had worked a little harder on this one we'd be talking about this series along with Black Company and Garret. Recommended for Cook fans.
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Dec 30, 2006 21:00
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Snake Agent, Liz Williams. Chinese cop in near future with high tech and also Chinese gods and demons and Hell and the tao. Basic plot: the infernal Ministry of Epidemics is making a power move and the protagonist and a demon cop/functionary assigned to the Ministry of Wealth have to find and stop them. There's also a demon refugee married to the human cop and ghost prostitutes and various crap like that. The idea's good but the execution was sort of lame. There's a sequel out but I'm not going to bother.
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Feb 9, 2007 01:55
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Bangkok 8, John Burdett. Kind of mediocre. A little too heavy on the supernatural for my tastes. I see he's got a couple sequels but I'm not going to read them. Maze of Stars, John Brunner. Early 90s sf that I first read back when and was identified for me in a recent thread. The first few sections were good but then it just dragged on and dissolved into a series of vignettes. The Spriggan Mirror, Lawrence Watt Evans. Latest completed installment of his long-running Ethshar series, self-serialized online because the publishers wanted him to write stuff that sells better. If you read the earlier books you'd recognize the plot by the title, if you didn't read the earlier books they aren't bad if (a) you like light fantasy and (b) you can find them; also (3) they are mostly better than this one.
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Feb 15, 2007 04:24
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Scar Night, Alan Campbell. Angels of dark gods, dark gods, assassins, poisons, crazy tribesmen, crazy fathers, fighting zeppelins, general ickiness. Kind of tedious in places but overall surprisingly decent. A poor man's China Mieville.
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Feb 18, 2007 04:32
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The Clumsiest People in Europe: Or, Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World, edited by Todd Pruzan. Two hundred pages of calumny and libel against every race, ethnicity, and nation of the world (except the English and some of the peoples who are almost English) for children of the early Victorian era. Bad Astronomy by Phil Plait, operator of the website of the same name. Astrologers, UFOlogists, creationists, moon deniers, kooks, and other freaks are attacked over the course of this book as the author tries to knock the bunk out of each of them. I'm part of the choir to whom he was already preaching so my views are pre-colored.
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Feb 21, 2007 03:16
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LooseChanj posted:Eric, Terry Pratchett. The original edition was illustrated. Edit for on-topic: Startide Rising, David Brin. I got a hankering to re-read this recently. It's aged a little bit, and I'm not sure if I like the revised edition, but it's still a classic of early-80s sf.
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Mar 18, 2007 02:28
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Fly Me to the Moon by Belbruno, about the invention of a new class of orbital transfers. The standard method for going to, say, the Moon is to use a big rocket to get to Earth orbit, a MASSIVE THRUST to get on an elliptical trajectory in the direction of the Moon, and another MASSIVE THRUST a couple days later to slow down enough to be captured in lunar orbit. These new methods involve using the big rocket to get to Earth orbit, but then using a little engine to get to a high enough orbit where the gravity of the Earth and Moon is starting to cancel out or at least get weird and then fire a little burst of the engines to get on a crazy wandering path and eventually nestle into an elliptical lunar orbit a couple months later. It was a little heavy on "JPL and Hughes are screwing me again  " and more diagrams would have been nice (there are a bunch of hand-drawn (!) ones already) and a little short for  but not bad overall.
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Mar 18, 2007 23:33
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Robot Bastard posted:Actually, we already knew about that. It's more efficient than the Hohmann Transfer, but not to the point where it's worth the extended travel time (unless you're talking about huge distances, i.e. travelling from the Earth to Neptune...and you don't mind taking thirty years to get there.) Now I'm wondering what Belbruno's point in writing the book was v  vAlso finished: One Good Turn, Witold Rybczynski, a short book about what the author decided was the most important tool of the millenium, the screwdriver. He traces the ancestry of the screw-as-fastener back to the 13th century (or so) and then moves forward with the development of the screwdriver, ending with a chapter on Archimedes and the water screw. Also also finished: The Invention that Changed the World, Robert Buderi. The invention/discovery of radar, its uses in WWII, and subsequent development. Pretty interesting, but I thought it dragged at the end.
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Mar 24, 2007 02:57
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Giant Telescopes, W.Patrick McCray, about the development of, well, giant telescopes since the Hale 'scope in the 40s. It started out interesting but by the end it was just one big blur of meetings and crises. Not recommended.
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Mar 25, 2007 04:44
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krustster posted:Whoah, excuse me? Is that literally what it's about, or is that some kind of metaphor? Because that sounds amazingly awesome. Yep, that's what it's about, except filtered through a geek lens. (His A Colder War, collected in Toast, is the same idea but better IMO) Me, I haven't had a lot of time to read for fun lately, but I did manage to get enough time to finish The Cheater's Guide to Baseball, about all the ways in which player and teams can bend or break the written and unwritten rules, from the relatively legal (sign stealing, specialized groundskeeping) through the mild illegal (spitballs, featuring Gaylord Perry) to the worst of the worst (betting on baseball, with chapters on the Black Sox and Pete Rose). Recommended for baseball fans.
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Apr 21, 2007 15:58
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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, LeCarre. This had been on my "to read" stack for a long time until I needed a book to read while my car was being serviced. Fast-paced, short (by modern standards) novel about counterintelligence. Kind of quaint nowadays since the end of the Cold War (LeCarre mentions this in a forward, but the settings of 1970s London and the boys' school are even more removed than the possibility of being buried by the Soviets)Sarilith posted:Next I'm going to read DragonLance Legends Volume 3: Test of the Twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman I've read the first two twice, and honestly had no idea there was a third until I got bored and browsed through the rest of the pages of the second book and saw there was a third. I can't wait to see what happens after the second. Why would you do such a thing 
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Apr 28, 2007 08:05
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